Yi He: Crypto's Early High-Return Period Is Fading as Industry Enters Maturity Phase

Binance co-founder Yi He said the crypto industry is maturing along the same trajectory as the early internet, which split between counterculture extremes and mainstream commercial companies such as Google and Amazon. Speaking at the Hong Kong Web3 Festival 2026, Yi said Binance will firmly follow the mainstream commercial path, and that Wall Street's reversal to embrace blockchain confirms the industry has reached maturity — while also signaling that the early high-return window is narrowing, with rising user complaints about Bitcoin price volatility reflecting that shift. Yi said the technology layer across Web3's Layer 1 and Layer 2 infrastructure is now sufficiently developed, and that the industry's priority should be application development delivering real-world utility, with commercial viability — whether a technology solves a real problem and can attract paying users — as the primary benchmark.